


Honey and Tangerines

by anutty1



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Domestic Violence, Gen, Mpreg, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21589702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anutty1/pseuds/anutty1
Summary: Jim Hopper finds meaning in the frozen food aisle.
Relationships: Steve Harrington & Jim "Chief" Hopper
Comments: 3
Kudos: 117





	Honey and Tangerines

**Author's Note:**

> I am pro-choice and some of the views expressed about abortion and bodily autonomy are not my own.

Jim is barely functioning as he stands in front of the freezer at Melvald’s General Store trying to decide between the Salisbury Steak and the Homestyle Meatloaf Hungry Man frozen dinners. While contemplating all of his life choices he feels a presence at his side and he turns and sees a young man, rich-or what passes as rich in Hawkins by the Members Only jacket, fancy jeans, fresh Nikes, and what is undoubtedly a $100 haircut; a well-kept Omega by the tangy smell of him. 

“Can I help you?” Jim tries to soften his tone because the lean of the boy’s body is hesitant, as if he doesn’t want to take up the space he’s in and Jim can smell the reticence almost overpowering the tangerine and honey of his Omegan scent.

The pretty Omega, and, god, Jim feels scuzzy just thinking that because the boy looks no older than five, standing in the frozen food aisle clutching a half empty basket and looking everywhere but at Jim. His hackles raise because even off the clock, he’s a cop and he knows when someone has something heavy to say but doesn’t know how to say it.

“Chief Hopper?” The boy whispers while making brief eye contact, brave for an Omega to do with an unknown Alpha, even after the Omega Rights Movement in the late sixties.

“You ok, kid?” His tiredness is replaced by his professionalism-his surfeit of empathy always ready to over involve himself in other people’s lives; really being a cop was his only career option because he never had a deft hand when doling out his empathy, he always had to hit folks over the head with it.

“I…my,”

“What’s your name?”

“Steve.” 

“Steve, do you need help with something?”

The boy swallows but before he can answer, a sharp “Steven” echoes through the aisles and his Omegan Freeze Response is triggered, flooding the area with the noxious scent of fear, potent and pointed.

“Kid, Steve-“ before Jim can finish his sentence, a man Jim’s age, but slick, the kind of man who allows his money to separate himself from his own humanity, comes around the partition and it’s obvious this is the person who is causing the fear response in the young Omega.

“What are you-Hello,” the man interrupts himself when he becomes aware of Jim’s presence. Anger, hot and bright, flashes across the man’s face before it’s willfully replaced by an almost benign superficiality. All of Jim’s alarms are blaring and he has to keep himself from grabbing Steve and running out of the store in an old-fashioned Omega Grab and Run.

“Evening,” Jim’s instincts tell him not to take his eyes off the other Alpha, gives him the kind of eye contact that could be construed as a Challenge; would be if this were just twenty years previous. 

“I certainly hope my boy isn’t causing you any trouble,” the man’s hand snakes around his son’s arm and even without the boy’s flinch, Jim would know the grip was painful; was meant to be painful. 

“No trouble at all. And if he ever wants to say hi, he can always call or stop by the station,” Jim is now looking directly at Steve so he doesn’t miss the fearful glance the boy gives his father before he says a resigned “thanks” to Jim, letting the Alpha know he’ll never see or talk to the boy again because his approaching Jim was obviously a spur of the moment decision.

“I’m sure that won’t be happening, but you have a good day, Chief and I’m real sorry about the bother. Come on, Steve, let’s leave the Chief to his day,” the false civility in the man’s voice has Jim’s teeth on edge because he knows that whatever the boy had wanted to talk to Jim about, his father figured prominently, but his gut feeling isn’t going to get Jim an arrest warrant, so he has to force himself to turn back to the freezer and contemplate this evening’s choice of frozen dinner.

*

Jim thinks about the unsettling encounter in the freezer aisle at least once a day in the weeks following, but life moves on with work, going on calls about teenagers disturbing the peace (what else was there to do for young people in Hawkins but sit around in cars listening to loud music?), domestic disturbance calls and ruminating on what could have been and what might be with the formidable and newly single Joyce Byers, and the distressed omega who accosted him in Melvelds slips further and further from his active memory. Until, of course, he’s blindsided again on a random Tuesday.

“This is Chief Hopper,” Jim answers, distracted, trying to find a more creative way to say Mike and Carol Teems were caught mid-gratis at the quarry this past Saturday for the second time even though they should know better because they are well into their thirties with two middle-school aged children. Silence greets Jim until an aborted sob can be heard. “Hey, I’m here, how can I help you,” Jim breaks out the concerned cop voice, because, god help him, he can’t turn off the well of empathy he inherited from his mother.

It’s a few more moments of quiet crying before the other voice says, “I-it’s Steve, we-“

“I remember you, Steve. Doesn’t sound like you’re doing too good, buddy. Did you just want to talk?”

“I’m pregnant,” the boy whispered, worrying Jim that he wasn’t safe in the moment. 

“Are you currently safe, Steve? Do you need me to come and get you?”

“No, I’m alone. I just…” he starts crying again and Jim realizes this is probably the first time Steve’s said he was pregnant out loud.

“I take it you don’t want to be in your current condition?”

“No.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t choose the situation that got you in this condition, either?”

A quiet, defeated, “No,” infuriates Jim and he has to take a moment to reel in the righteous fury so Steve doesn’t think he’s the direct recipient of his ire. 

It’s 1983 and Omega Rights have come a long way and although omegas are no longer seen as just the pretty property of an alpha or an obscenely rich beta, a pregnant teenaged omega is still, if not common, not an unlikely sight, but Jim knows Steve is calling him because the pregnancy is his breaking point; he can no longer ignore, or compartmentalize, or outright lie to himself about what was happening to him. This frightened boy, on the cusp of adulthood, is calling Jim because he can no longer handle his personal horror on his own; he needs help, he needs Jim, and, well, Jim was made for this. 

“How far along are you, Steve?”

“I haven’t had a heat in two months.”

Jim considers himself an Omegist, couldn’t really be anything else being raised by the firecracker that was Donna Rae Hopper, the omega that raised him and his sister alone after she left their vicious drunk of a father in Knox, Tennessee and ran to Hawkins to work on the line for GM, who was hiring Omegas at half the pay of alphas and betas, but even he has to willfully extinguish the immediate disgust he feels at the thought of helping Steve get an abortion, 10 years after beta women and all omegas got the right to legal abortions. 

“That gives you time to take care of it, Steve. Is that what you want to do?”

Quiet sobs meet Jim’s question and his heart breaks for the boy; if he feels conflicted by the idea of an omega aborting he can’t imagine how it would feel as an omega to have to make that decision. 

“He’ll want me to get rid of it.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“Yeah-yes, I…that’d be…he’d want me to do…that.”

“I’m asking about what you want, Steve.”

“It’s not natural, is it? An omega doing…that.”

“There’s lots of things we do that aren’t natural but we do them because they’re necessary. If this is too sudden and you need time to think about it you have some time to decide your next move –“

“No, I don’t. If I’m going to…I need to do it now. It goes against everything I’ve been made to believe about myself; I was made to give my alpha children. My brain is shouting at me that I can’t have this baby and that I can’t hurt my baby. I don’t know what to do.”

Jim knows the kid wants him to take control and make the decision, and he gets it, this is an overwhelmingly shitty situation Steve finds himself in and Jim is a cop, an adult, he’s supposed to be able to make things better, but too much has been taken from Steve already and Jim isn’t going to add his name to the list of people who’ve overwritten Steve’s agency with his own desires. 

“A trite as it sounds, this is your body and you’re allowed to make any and all decisions about it, good or not so good. I know that hasn’t been the case for you, probably for awhile now, but it’s the way it’s supposed to be, Steve. If you want to keep the baby, keep the baby and damn what anyone else thinks.”

“What would I do with a baby?”

“Love it. Protect it. Better than you’ve been loved and protected.”

More sobs come down the line, completing the fracturing of Jim’s heart. How do you have a kid and not do everything you possibly could to keep them safe? Make them happy? What he wouldn’t give to have his Sara in his arms again, happy, healthy, alive. Here is this beautiful boy in such pain because one of his parents has done the absolute worst thing you can do to a person and the other parent is complicit in the monstrosity. Jim doesn’t understand why some parents get punished and some parents suffer no consequences for hurting their children.

“I have to think about this.”

“I’m here kid whenever you’re ready.”

A near silent thank you is said before Jim hears the dial tone. He has to take several deep breaths because the urge to find Steve’s father and beat him into oblivion is nearly all consuming. He looks down at the report he was reading before Steve called, and if he has to read it several times before it actually makes sense, well, that’s just between him and his mug of coffee. 

*

Jim doesn’t quite successfully resist the urge to find out where the Harrington’s exact address (because there was no other option than them living in Loch Nora), nor does he resist the urge to drive up and down their road several times during his shifts over the next few days; he’s doing one of his drive by’s when a 10-16 comes across the scanner and it’s the address he knows by heart. 

“This is Hopper, responding to the 10-16 at 532 W. Craig Drive,” he doesn’t have to turn on his lights to be there in under five minutes. Jim knows he should wait for back up, it’s the smart thing to do for every call, but especially for domestics because those almost always go sideways and very quickly. Jim says a quick prayer to a God that stopped listening to him sometime before he boarded a flight to the Long Binh Junction right out of high school. Jim hears the shouts before he reaches the porch and while he wants to barge right in and silence the surprisingly shrill yelling immediately, he knows he at least has to make a semblance of an attempt at following proper police procedural.

“This is Hawkins Police, please open the door,” Jim’s left hand hovers over his gun as silence suddenly descends from inside the house. Jim breathes deep and takes a step back as he hears the locks to the door moving in the tumbler.

“Yes?” John Harrington does not look good. While not as broad as Jim, Harrington is tall and well-built, intimidating in the way men who have always been sure of their place in the world always are. Tonight his normally shellacked hair is in disarray, buttons missing, seemingly ripped out as thread is sticking out of the shirt and what Jim finds most off-putting are the obvious scratch marks on his cheeks and neck, marring his admittedly handsome face. This is not the scene Jim envisioned whenever he thought about knocking on this door.

“I’m Chief Hopper and I received a call of a disturbance at this address; may I enter the premises?”

“I apologize for the noise, Chief, but things are fine. I promise the noise will end.”

“All due respect Mr. Harrington, but you don’t look like things are fine. Again, I ask for permission to enter the premises.”

Before Harrington can open his mouth and attempt to obfuscate the situation, a resounding crash comes from the depths of the house and reflex has Jim pulling his gun from his holster and kicking the door out of Harrington’s grip. The widened door shows a house in chaos, end tables and lamps turned over and broken over the expensive, thick carpet; Jim can see several vases that had to have been thrown at the walls shattered as well, with a hole in the plaster, Jim’s eyes immediately look at Harrington’s knuckles but they aren’t bloody so it wasn’t him that was so filled with rage they put their hand through a wall and instantly Jim’s heart starts rabbiting double time needing to lay eyes on Steve now. 

“Step aside, Mr. Harrington, I am entering the premises because I believe someone to be in danger. Steve? This is Chief Hopper; are you able to tell me where you are?” Jim pushes past Harrington who doesn’t put up much resistance, trying hard to keep aware of his presence at his back and keep his eyes forward for whatever is waiting for him in the depths of this too large house; this is exactly why he should have waited for back up. He’d rightfully chew out any of his deputies who barreled into a domestic gun raised and back unprotected; this is a great way for a cop to get killed. But he can’t leave Steve in this house by himself one minute longer. 

Another crash, coming from what Jim now understands is the kitchen, wide, white, bursting with big, shiny appliances and occupied by who must be Mrs. Harrington, who, even in her fury, is a beautiful woman. The kind of tall and thin you only see in the high gloss magazines in the drugstore, Jim can see Steve’s features on her face, but softer and more careworn. 

“Mrs. Harrington? I’m-

“I know exactly who you are! Have you come to take that, that monster away? Do you know what he’s done! Do you?” Her eyes have madness in them as she picks up another plate to smash on the linoleum. 

“I have an idea, Mrs. Harrington, I’m here to h-

“How could he do this to me? To his mother! Sleeping with my husband, trying to supplant me in my own marriage bed!” Jim’s brain whites out for a moment and when he finally understands what the words she’s just uttered mean, he feels an anger so sudden and consuming his gun raises and he knows as sure as he knows he’ll never love someone as much as he loved his Sara that he would have put a bullet through this woman’s brain if he hadn’t heard two of his deputies announce themselves as they entered the house. 

“Kapinsky, I need you in the kitchen to keep an eye on suspect number two; there’s an unaccounted for minor possibly in the house.” 

Mrs. Harrington doesn’t acknowledge being called a suspect, just keeps throwing china that probably costs more than the bedroom set Jim has in his cabin. 

“What’s going on, Chief?” Kapinsky is young, a bit too thick to really be good at the job but he wants to be and that counts for something, and he near worships the ground Jim walks on so that usually helps his opinion of the young man on most days. 

“Please ask Mrs. Harrington how Mr. Harrington came to have those scars on his face. I’m going to look for their son, I think he may be hiding somewhere in the house.”

Jim doesn’t wait for an answer from Kapinsky, but heads out of the kitchen and to the stairway, glancing at Deputy Boyd talking to Mr. Harrington in that calm way he has that almost always gets perps to tell on themselves. 

Jim goes through the motions of securing the perimeter but he knows he’ll find the boy in his room and he’s right. He finds Steve huddled in his closet, arms wrapped tightly around himself, his misery bitter and heavy in the air.

“Hey, kid, it’s Jim Hopper. Are you hurt?”

When he raises his head, there’s an obvious handprint across his face; it’s the kind of bruise that will turn red and black and will look as if it is the most painful thing in the world. Jim is filled with the profound sorrow that only comes from seeing a hurting child. 

“Oh, Steve, I’m so sorry.”

“I told her I didn’t want to, but she didn’t believe me. I didn’t want to, I swear!”

The boy is looking at Jim, begging him to believe that he didn’t want to fuck his father, and Jim honestly doesn’t know how to respond to him, because of course he didn’t want to be intimate with his father, any sane person would realize the pain this boy is in, but some people refuse to let anyone else’s pain supersede their own, even their own children’s.

“I know, Steve. Your mother knows that too, but she’s in a lot of pain right now. It doesn’t excuse what she’s done tonight, but…she’s in denial right now. She’s mad she missed what was going on with you and she’s sorry. And instead of dealing with that, she got angry and turned that anger on you.”

Jim sits down beside Steve, awkwardly because he’s 6’3 and every part of him is tired and on the edge of giving up. He doesn’t crowd him too much, the boy’s probably had enough of unwanted skin on skin contact at this point.

“I tried telling her years ago, when he, when he first started coming into my room, but she didn’t let me finish, just told me she didn’t have time to hear one of my stories. I thought she knew and didn’t care.”

“Adults lie to themselves, force themselves not to see what’s right in front of them because they’re too scared to deal with the truth. What your father was doing to you was too big for your mother to deal with, but she should have protected you, that’s her job and she failed, and I am so sorry, Steve. I’m sorry everyone failed you, including me.” 

The boy completely breaks down into the kind of sobs that sound like they can rend a body in two; he burrows into Jim’s side almost violently and Jim supposes he’s just desperate to feel hands on him that have no intention to hurt. And Jim pours everything he has into the hug; everything that he’s had to fold into the smallest piece and tuck away inside his left boot after Sara, now he unfolds his heart and blankets this beautiful boy in it, whose only ever needed someone to love him enough. Tonight, Jim will love Steve enough.

*

Eventually Jim and Steve have to leave the boy’s closet; the boy cleaves himself to Jim and refuses to be separated from him. Jim understands, with his badge and his soft underbelly and his belief, he’s probably the first person to make Steve feel safe in years. He tries to distract him from the picture of both of his parents in the backseat of his deputies’ respective sedans by talking him through the process of emergency placements. 

“Can’t I just stay at a friend’s? My best friend, Tommy, his parents will let me stay with them, at least for tonight, I’m sure,” Jim almost caves looking into those almost cartoonish big, pleading amber eyes, but he has to follow protocol to make sure that Steve can get out of this awful house permanently and that it sticks. 

“I’m sorry, buddy, but I have to follow procedure to make sure you’re safe. I want you safe, Steve, ok?”

He searches Jim’s face and must find nothing but the truth because he nods quickly before allowing the paramedic hovering in the background to take a look at him while Jim exits the ambulance and coordinate with his deputies and social services.

“What are you thinking, Chief? Taking them both in?” Kapinsky asks Jim as he comes over to confer with his deputies. He looks over at the Harrington’s in their respective vehicular prisons, and Mrs. Harrington is staring straight ahead, her posture as rigid as it was during her pageantry days and Mr. Harrington is looking straight at the ambulance, trying to catch a glimpse of Steve and Jim knows he’ll never leave Steve alone if has any amount of access to the Omega and Jim vows that Steve will never go back to that house, even if he has to hide the boy away in his mother’s hard won cottage out in the woods until he’s 18 and responsible for himself. 

“Yeah, we’ll book both of them with assault, most likely won’t stick with Mr. Harrington, but Mrs. Harrington will definitely need a lawyer with the visible marks on both Harrington and Steve. I’ll get pictures of Steve’s injuries if you’ll get pictures of Harrington’s.”

“Is it true, what she’s accusing him of?” Boyd asks, tone careful but eyes full of banked fire starting at Harrington. 

“Yeah, Steve, he told me without telling me weeks ago, couldn’t bring the bastard in obviously but I wanted any excuse I could to get Steve out of the house.”

Boyd turns his sharp eyes to Jim, “is that why you got here so soon after dispatch?”

Jim shrugs before he tells his deputies to take both of the Harrington’s to the station while he handles getting Steve a safe place to stay tonight. 

*

Jim has the night dispatcher, Judy, call CPS, and luckily his favorite social worker, Tanya Sinclair is on call and she’s at the Harrington’s in what feels like, at least to Jim, just minutes. As he suspected, Steve warms up to Mrs. Sinclair immediately, her sincerity, her goodness, always a palpable thing and in no time, she has relaxed Steve enough to let Jim out of his sight so he could change and pack an overnight bag.

“How you holding up, Chief? I know these calls aren’t easy for you and your men.” Her warm brown eyes turn to Jim once Steve goes up the stairs and disappears from their sight.

“I’m worried about the boy; he can’t come back here, Tanya, his father-

Her eyes close briefly and for a moment she deflates like a popped balloon before she fortifies herself once more. “I had suspected. Is he…

“Yes.” 

“Okay, Mrs. Henderson has agreed to take him for the next five days, we’ll work to get him placed with a safe relative, while you work on building a strong enough case that neither Harrington will ever see that boy again.”

Jim smiles in spite of the situation, he’s always liked competent women filled with fire, and he knows she’ll do everything in her purview to make sure Steve feels supported, feels safe and is safe.

“Yes, ma’am,” they share a smile until they hear Steve coming down the stairs, and now that he’s changed and attempted to tame that wild mane of his, the handprint on his beautiful face is even more stark and unsettling than it was when Jim first arrived and the boy’s face had been red and blotchy from crying and panic. 

“All right, Steve, Mrs. Sinclair is going to take you to Mrs. Henderson’s house, you’ll be with her and her son for five days while Mrs. Sinclair works to get you in the custody of a safe relative. We’ll work on making sure neither of your parents hurt you again, ok buddy?”

Steve responds by dropping his bag and running into his arms, and Jim has never been all that successful at keeping his emotions from flowing out of him, something that inspired his own father’s contempt, and he cries as Steve squeezes him tightly.

“Thank you,” the boy says before disentangling himself and going out the door with a purpose Jim hadn’t ever seen on the boy before. 

“I’ll keep you updated, Jim. Keep me in the loop, too,” Tanya says before following Steve out the door with her own sense of purpose and before long Jim hears them drive away. 

It takes a few minutes before Jim can find his own will to leave this haunted house, but, as ever, Jim Hopper does what he’s always done, put one foot in front of the other, and moves along.

*

Jim’s sitting at his desk, pretending to work on an arrest report, but really, he’s just enjoying Flo’s excellent coffee and contemplating asking the newly divorced Joyce Byers on a date after having an outrageously flirty conversation outside of the post office yesterday, when Flo yells at him that she’s transferring a call he’ll want to take.

“Chief Hopper,” he says unenthusiastically, bracing himself for some senseless complaint from an overly involved neighborhood busybody at 8am on a Tuesday.

“Hi, Chief, it’s Steve, Steve Harrington,” Jim hasn’t spoken with Steve in months, not since his maternal aunt drove down from Ann Arbor, Michigan and whisked him away in a cloud of Chanel and righteous fury. Steve hadn’t been to any of the hearings Jim’s made sure to show up at for the Harringtons, who’d fled to Indianapolis trying to outrun the small town censure Hawkins had brought down on them. They’d been out of jail within hours, but so far every petition they’ve put in to get Steve back has been denied, and both Jim and Mrs. Sinclair are working hard to make sure they keep getting denied. 

“Steve, buddy, how’re you doing?” Jim perks up at hearing the boy’s voice. He sounds sure of himself and pride bubbles up within Jim at this brave boy thriving after what he’d lived through.

“I’m good, how are you?”

“Better now that I know you’re doing better. How are you liking Ann Arbor?”

“Oh, I love it! My Aunt Ruth is helping me with my schoolwork so I can have a chance of getting into the University of Michigan, where she teaches. If I get in, I’ll be able to get a discount on tuition, so that’s the goal.”

“Yeah, that’s great Steve! Know what you’d like to study?”  


“Social work, I-Mrs. Sinclair really helped me and I’d like to help other kids like that. I also thought about becoming a cop like you, because you helped me the most, but I think social work is a better fit for me.”

Jim feels a surge of emotion at that, but he sighs it out before going on. “How’s the baby?” He does know that Steve did decide against terminating it, but he’s not sure of his plans once the baby’s born.

“It’s a girl. She’s big and really active, doesn’t let me sleep for more a few hours at night because she’s always up and moving around. My aunt’s good friend and her husband are going to take her once she’s born, they live in New York and have always wanted a child, but, I guess, it just never happened for them. They’re really excited, Mrs. Hunt, that’s my aunt’s friend, she comes down and goes with me to all of my doctor’s appointments. She’s really supportive and wants me to be as involved in my, well, I guess, our, daughter’s life as I want to be.”

“How do you feel about that, Steve? Being in her life, I mean.”

“I…think it’ll be good for me, for both of us. I can’t give her what she needs but she’ll still know how much I love her. Plus, she’ll have the Hunts, who love her to pieces already, so…she’ll be loved and she’ll know it.” 

Jim can hear Steve sigh out all of his emotions before going on, “well, I don’t want to keep you, I have to leave for school or I’ll be really late. I just really wanted to talk to you, today, so thanks for listening to me blather on. I hope you’re doing ok, too, Chief.”

“I am, Steve. I’m glad to hear that you and your baby are gonna be all right, thank you for telling me.”

“Yeah, we’re good. I…talked the Hunts into naming her Sara.” At this, Jim can’t sigh out his emotions, they come through him suddenly and like a freight chain. “Just, thank you, Chief Hopper, for everything.” Steve hangs up before Jim is in any shape to respond. Jim replaces the phone on its cradle and picks up his coffee for a fortifying sip before actually starting on first arrest report of the day.


End file.
